Historically, telecommunications have involved the transmission of voice and fax signals over a network dedicated to telecommunications, such as the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) were are Private Brage Exchange (PBX). Similarly, data communications between computers have been historically transmitted on a dedicated data network, such a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN). Currently telecommunications and data transmissions are being merged into a integrated communication network using technology such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP). Since many LANs and WANs transmit computer data using Intranet Protocol (IP), VOIP uses this existing technology to transmit voice and fax signals by converting these signals into digital data and encapsulating the data for transmission over an IP network.
Traditional communication networks often support multipoint conferences between a number of participants using different communication devices. A multipoint conference unit (MCU) is used to couple these devices, which allows users from distributed geographic locations to participate in the conference. The conference may be audio only (e.g., a teleconference) or may include video conferencing/broadcasting.
Conference systems utilize various resources when hosting a conference, and one of the key resources that conference administrators may need to indicate when setting up a conference call is the number of ports required for the conference. However, given the ambiguity regarding the availability of participants, conferences are usually setup reserving more ports than are required. Most meeting reservation systems (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) allow only three choices for an invited attendee to handle a meeting: accept, decline, or defer decision for later (e.g., “maybe” or “tentative”). These choices are insufficient to adequately book resources such as video ports, audio ports, seats, meals, rooms, or even to determine the expected attendance.